The Army, Air Force and Marine Corps will be forced to reopen their tuition assistance programs — and the Coast Guard likely will be pressured to follow — under a late-hour Senate amendment to a stopgap budget bill.
Spc. Ricardo Cerros gave his life when he threw himself in the path of a grenade to protect two fellow soldiers a year and a half ago. They survived, and they credit the fallen 24-year-old soldier for keeping them alive.
Shawn Graves said a final goodbye to the world as he lost consciousness. A man wearing a suicide vest had blown himself up inside a dining hall in northern Iraq. Graves had wounds all over his torso, and he did not expect to open his eyes again.
Here are some fresh developments that feuding politicians have created for the U.S. military in wartime:
The Pentagon is canceling a well-loved international Air Force competition at Joint Base Lewis-McChord this summer, grounding the air mobility “rodeo” to save money.
The Joint Chiefs are breathing a bit easier after the House voted Wednesday to fund the government through September, and included a 2013 defense appropriations bill that would give the armed services more money and budget flexibility to ease the threat of a wartime readiness crisis.
Carol Graham read a news story about a fatal attack on U.S. soldiers one morning eight months after her son took his own life, and she wondered if she had just lost a second son to war. “Never in a million years do you think this can happen again,” her husband, retired Army Maj. Gen. Mark Graham, thought as Carol read the story to him.
The Obama administration pared back its plan to develop a single integrated electronic health record system for the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs because of shrinking defense budgets and rising costs.
Forced Army budget cuts that could be activated Friday would show up in the South Sound and other military communities in the form of slashed paychecks to furloughed employees and reduced opportunities for private companies to work on bases, senior Army officers said Wednesday at a news conference.
Joint Base Lewis-McChord officials have agreed to work with the City of Lakewood to reduce cut-through traffic in a neighborhood next to the base.
Most of 800,000 Department of Defense civilian employees will see their workweeks shortened and their pay cut by 20 percent from late April through September, if Congress, as now expected, fails to stop $46 billion in indiscriminate defense budget cuts set to take effect March 1.
Thurston County firefighters rescued three Joint Base Lewis-McChord paratroopers who were caught in trees during an exercise Thursday afternoon.
Staff Sgt. Nicholas Reid showed up at his Joint Base Lewis-McChord explosives unit in 2008 with more passion than knowledge about the dangerous specialty he chose. He left it two months ago as an expert, someone fellow soldiers admired for the intensity he brought to his job disabling enemy bombs – and for the wild spirit he showed after hours.
MOSCOW — With a blinding flash and a booming shock wave, a meteor blazed across the western Siberian sky Friday and exploded with the force of 20 atomic bombs, injuring more than 1,000 people as it blasted out windows and spread panic in a city of 1 million.
Col. Darron Wright thought he knew who the bad guys were on his first deployment to Iraq. They were Sunni Muslim insurgents giving his soldiers hell in the communities around Saddam Hussein’s hometown.
Defense Department civilian and military leaders gave full details this week of the readiness crisis unfolding across America’s armed forces, and got back not a whit of reassurance from Congress that relief is on the way.
Army leaders insist they have fixed flaws in Madigan Army Medical Center’s behavioral health department that resulted in the misdiagnoses of hundreds of patients. But they have refused to release reports that could substantiate their findings and shed light on what happened at the Army hospital last year.
Stephanie Crosse figures her next move with her Army lawyer husband should open new career opportunities. She has a license to practice law in Georgia, and the Peach State is their next destination.
Lt. Cmdr. Jack Townsend, a Navy Reserve retiree in Richmond, Va., first became aware a decade ago that he wasn’t considered a military veteran under federal law. It’s been bothering him ever since.
Lakewood residents living next door to Joint Base Lewis-McChord say the base’s rapid growth has created major traffic headaches in their neighborhood.
Congressional leaders appear to have reach consensus that it is safer politically to allow deep and arbitrary cuts to military budgets than it is to negotiate a large debt-reduction deal that would have names attached.
An ambush opened on the American patrol from just 35 feet away in hostile Taliban territory.
This time last year, the Air Force unveiled a plan to cut Air National Guard strength by 5,100 members along with more than 200 Guard aircraft, touting this as a reasonable efficiency, in part because Guard squadrons cost more to operate than active duty squadrons.
For years, female soldiers from the South Sound have served in harm’s way despite official limits on their front-line combat roles, which the Pentagon announced Wednesday would be lifted.
Naval Hospital Bremerton doctors, nurses and corpsmen stay sharp by working on dummies.
Unbending politicians who hold defense budgets hostage while refusing to cut a deal to address the nation’s debt crisis are putting at risk the readiness of America’s armed forces, the Joint Chiefs warned Monday in a “28-star” letter to the House and Senate armed services committees.
What one word sums up your feelings about your father coming home from war? Chelsea Riley picked up a marker pen to answer the question, but she couldn’t stop at a single word. A small essay poured out, describing how she missed Capt. Ian Riley during the holidays even as she looked forward to his return by Christmas.
Staff Sgt. Chris Miller smiles when he says he and his wife, Sarah, “bucked the trend” and kept their relationship together through four deployments in the past 10 years.
There’s nothing like time at home between brutal combat deployments to refresh soldiers, get them fit for the next tour of duty and maybe help them save a relationship.
CASUALTIES OF WAR
Search our database for service members from Washington or who were assigned from military installations around the state who have died in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere in U.S. military operations since Sept. 11, 2001.
JBLM NEWS
More military news: For your local military news visit the Northwest Guardian. The authorized newspaper of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.
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